Theme 1 - Instruments in Education Today Monday 14 September A special session, organised by Elizabeth Cavicchi and Peter Heering, exploring the uses of scientific instruments in educational contexts (including schools, universities and museums) today. How do historical instruments of science engage learners, whether through authentic historical instruments, or with models, reproductions, or constructions of their own? Session 1 Zheran Wang Making Instruments as a Way to Understand History: An Experimental Course in the University This presentation will give an introduction to an experimental course that was first offered in the fall of 2019 at Tsinghua University in Beijing, China. The course aims to combine the theoretical teaching of the history of science with the making of scientific instruments. Students made two instruments during the course: one imaginary, that is Leonardo da Vinci's aerial screw, or “the helicopter,” and one real, an ancient Chinese armillary sphere, based on a collection in the Forbidden City. The two teachers offer a series of lectures around the two instruments, including the life and the manuscript of Leonardo da Vinci, a history of flying machines, a brief history of machinery, the ancient concepts of heaven and astronomy in both China and the West, a history of astronomical instruments, etc. In the practical section, students learn to build the devices by mastering usual woodworking tools, ranging from traditional ones such as a file, saw, and plane to the new computerized numerical control carved machines. Now Tsinghua University is planning to build its science museum, for which the two lecturers are in charge of construction or reconstruction of exhibits. This experimental course is the result of their endeavours in translating research into teaching. The presentation will share their ideas on how to link the mind to the hand in college and museum education. Zheran Wang is an assistant professor in the Department of History of Science, Tsinghua University (Beijing, China). He is interested in the history of mathematics and natural philosophy in Europe before Newton, especially in the history of optics and perspective theory, the relations between science and arts during the Renaissance. He currently works on the scientific and technological manuscripts of Leonardo da Vinci, making reconstructions of some of his mechanical inventions for the future Science Museum of Tsinghua University. Frédérique Plantevin Historical machines, education and DIY in the Cabinet of Curiosity of Brest, France At the beginning of 2016, the Cabinet of Curiosity of the Faculty of Science and Technology of Brest opened its doors with a double aim: to be an exhibition center and a permanent workshop for scientific instruments. An unusual feature of the Cabinet is that in addition to manipulating some instruments (original samples, reconstructions or prototypes) users can also attempt to create their own by means of the tools available in the Cabinet (mainly for carton and wood crafts) or via collaboration with a local FabLab (Brest Open Factory). Instruments from the Cabinet collection have been used in several educational contexts with teachers, students and pupils. Activities include object classification (comparing with classification in naturalist collections), description of artefacts, analysis of unknown instruments, reconstruction of historical machines (by direct observation when present in the collection, or from other sources when not physically present) and invention of new ones. In this paper we will discuss the example of a course we have been trialing for three years with future teachers of mathematics. Students work in small groups on a historical machine and present their results, with demonstrations of the chosen instruments. We focus on two groups who chose to study and also build by themselves their own machines: one to draw parabolas with a string (quite well known, although not to the students at first) and the other (much less common) for an exponential curve thanks to tractional motion. This experiment leads us to a certain understanding of the ‘why’ and the ‘how’ of working on instruments. Frédérique Plantevin is lecturer in mathematics at the University of Brest – France; she is involved in initial and continuing teacher training, in particular through her implication in the Institute of Research in Mathematics Teaching network (IREM network, since 2006), and the Houses for Sciences for Teachers (MPLS, since 2016). She developed an axis of work with primary and secondary teachers on historical instruments in the classes. She organized exhibitions on instruments (integral and differential calculus, navigation, arithmetic calculus) with workshops for classes animated by students, teachers and researchers. In 2016, she founded the Cabinet of Curiosity in the Faculty of Science and Technology which collects outdated scientific instruments and objects of the Faculty, and also copies or reconstructions of ancient mathematical and physical instruments. She is keeper of this collection and convenes a group gathering some Faculty teachers, researchers, technicians and engineers for its enhancement. She took part in the publication “Passerelles – Enseigner les mathématiques par leur histoire au cycle 3”, coordinated by M. Moyon and D. Tournès for the chapter on calculus mechanization, which was awarded the “Académie des Sciences” prize of best scientific teaching book in 2019. Marta Rinaudo and Matteo Leone Underexplored places: the old school physics cabinets as effective physics learning environments The aim of this talk is to provide details on a physics education project which is conducted since 2017 at the University of Turin, Italy. The project’s goal is studying the educational significance of the history of physics. During the project we discovered that the old – and usually neglected – collections of physics instruments preserved by the oldest public and private secondary schools in the Turin and Cuneo provinces (North-western Italy), if appropriately studied and re-designed, could again serve an educational function. Furthermore, we collected evidence that this historical approach might provide us a better insight into student's prior knowledge and promote a better understanding of physical sciences. The core of this project is a two-step collaborative effort between the schools and the University of Turin. The first step takes place at the Museum of Physics of the University. The Museum of Physics offers to teachers and students a one-day programme for a guided visit to the collections and a workshop to make scientific instruments inspired to the collection using inexpensive materials, with a focus on the instruments about electricity, optics, and vacuum. Each work session begins with a semi-structured questionnaire designed to detect student’s prior knowledge about the physics contents later addressed in the workshop and to explore if the possible difficulties experienced by students are historically rooted. The second step is conducted in schools that, besides hosting large collections of physics instruments of historical-scientific interest, are also staffed by teachers actively engaged in training seminars in physics education and, in particular, interested in this historical approach. The aim is to help the teachers to exploit the local collections of old physics instruments for educational purposes. So far, interesting results have been obtained in two public and one private classical lyceums in the towns of Turin and Mondovì. Marta Rinaudo is Ph.D. in physics and astrophysics at the University of Turin, Italy. Her main research deals with the didactics and the history of physics, with a focus on the educational potential of the old collections of physics instruments in schools and universities. Matteo Leone is full professor of didactics and history of physics and President of the Master Degree in Primary Education at the University of Turin, Italy. His research focuses on the 19th and 20th centuries history of physics, on the educational power of the history of physics and on children’s ideas in science. Janet Laidla Making it about objects: a reboot of a history of science course The recent curriculum reform in Estonian higher education concentrates on the practical implementation of theoretical knowledge. It is no longer deemed sufficient to provide the students with theoretical knowledge through lectures, seminars, and papers but to further their practical and soft skills through projects, practical workshops, and work placements. This places pressure on teaching staff to come up with new teaching methods in order to attract the interests of the students, their future employers, and the university government. The paper introduces a case study that was a collaboration project between the Institute of History and Archaeology and the University Museum at the University of Tartu through which a new elective course in general history of science was created that not only introduces to (humanities) students the scientific instruments, their use, and history but also gives basic knowledge in object handling, photography, and graphic design. The students could choose one object to work with and had to create a poster about their object and this were exhibited publicly in the staircase of the University Museum. Feedback was gathered from the students afterwards and analysed for possible improvements for the next time the course will be offered (in spring 2021). Janet Laidla works as